Bengaluru: 300 squatters set to be evicted from Sulikunte

BENGALURU: With 300 flats in a 900-unit apartment complex built at Sulikunte, Sarjapur Road, encroached, chief secretary TM Vijay Bhaskar has ordered the housing department to vacate the squatters with the help of police and BBMP by January 31.


The units are meant to rehabilitate those displaced by the construction of a shopping mall-cum-residential project at Ejipura.

The flats were constructed by Karnataka Slum Development Board for tenants of flats in a group housing complex in Ejipura. BBMP later decided to take up a mall-cum-residential project at the Ejipura plot. While the tenants were to be accommodated in Sulikunte, the 1,532 original owners of flats in Ejipura were to be rehabilitated in the mall-cum-residential project itself.

The board completed the construction of flats and waited for various processes to be completed to hand them over to the intended beneficiaries, but many of them were illegally occupied. The decision to evict the squatters was taken at a meeting of the housing department and BBMP.

"The Palike has identified original tenants, but a few people have illegally occupied the newly constructed flats at Sulikunte. Now we have to redo the entire procedure to identify original allottees," said a board official.

The issue came to light after the board recently decided to hand over 900 flats to BBMP as its work was over.